One of Us: Grace De La Rosa launches campaign to raise awareness of colorectal cancer

Will.Dickey@jacksonville.com Grace De La Rosa would like people to join her in wearing blue to raise awareness of colorectal cancer.

Each October, millions of Americans, including professional football players, wear pink in an effort to raise awareness about breast cancer. That Think Pink campaign has been extremely effective.

Grace De La Rosa would like the color blue to do the same thing for colorectal cancer, of which she is a nine-year survivor. On Friday, De La Rosa will dress in blue and would like the rest of Jacksonville to follow her example.

The gesture will be part of the 46-year-old’s “Be a Blue Buddy” campaign aimed at raising awareness. She’s set up a Facebook page for her Be a Blue Buddy campaign. She has also established a goal of raising $5,000 during March, which she’ll donate to the Colon Cancer Alliance. Using the crowd sourcing website indiegogo (go to igg.me/at/beabluebuddy), she had raised $1,700 as of Monday afternoon.

Getting people to talk about colorectal cancer isn’t easy, she noted.

“Nobody likes to talk about colon cancer, because talking about the symptoms associated with this disease can be humiliating to discuss with anyone, even your own doctor,” she said.

That’s unfortunate because the disease is a killer that can be treated effectively if caught early, De La Rosa said. The American Cancer Society estimates that almost 137,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2014 and that more than 50,000 will die.

De La Rosa was a 38-year-old mother of two children who was a swimwear model, fitness instructor and fitness competitor when she got the diagnosis.

“I worked out religiously and ate healthy foods,” said De La Rosa, who was living in Maryland at the time. “So I was shocked when I heard the words, ‘You have cancer.’ ”

She underwent surgery, which removed a golf ball-size tumor from her colon, then began a six-month course of chemotherapy.

De La Rosa said that in retrospect, there were clear indications that she had a problem. She experienced abdominal cramps. She saw blood in her stool on one occasion. She became breathless climbing stairs. She was anemic.

But she was fit and she was young and medical guidelines recommend that most people begin screening for colorectal cancer at 50. Her example proves it “is not just an old person’s disease,” she said.

De La Rosa, who grew up in Atlantic Beach, graduated from Fletcher High School and the University of North Florida, where she studied communications and broadcasting. She did an internship at WJXT TV-4, then began working as a commercial actor and swim wear model. She was Miss Atlantic Beach for Hawaiian Tropic in 1997. After her husband, David Perrin, left the Navy, for which he served as a pilot, they moved back to Jacksonville, where he works for Boeing.